


The First Jump

by Altonym



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M!Shacob, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 06:05:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altonym/pseuds/Altonym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dylan Shepard watches his young daughter experiencing space for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Jump

It was a rite of passage – one spacers could barely remember, having usually gone through it aged a half, swaddled in blankets and giggling at the twinkling of the stars. Colonists usually went through it as toddlers or small children – pointing at planets, gasping in all of the collected wonder of millions of years of galactic civilisation. For the planetborn, the Earthborn, the wealthy daughters of Thessia, the homespawn of Sur’Kesh, it was something done much later, generally – late childhood, something to remember. Kids in the big reconstructed pod schools in London would come back after holidays and smirk at their classmates, producing photographs from their bags, describing the strange calm of biotic blue on a mass scale – rushing past the window like some kind of bizarre horizontal waterfall. Everyone had their own way of remembering it, if they’d been lucky enough to be aware their first time in space.  
  
Dylan had always been sure that any child of his would be raised on Earth. A life spent in the void was great once you were an adult, maybe – drifting by the stars, inconstant – but a child needed structure, boundaries, leadership. It was hard to draw limits around a child who could look out the window and see the expanse of the universe.  
  
Either way, Earth was home. Even if he was thousands of miles from his birthplace, Earth was home. You didn’t come back from the brink of death twice to throw yourself over a precipice; even Dylan-fucking-Shepard wasn’t that foolhardy. Besides, Jacob would’ve killed him. There had been a brief time when Dylan had considered returning to active service - a stupid time, a time when he felt lost and burdened with anticlimax.  
  
From his left, Dylan felt a squeeze on his hand. Jacob’s broad face had softened with a lack of heavy questions to answer – his smiles came easier now, without lives resting on their curvature. They’d all grown a little older – the once great Commander Shepard was _greying_ , for christ’s sake. It was a mercy, really, to be allowed to grow old by the galaxy. Not all got the opportunity.  
  
“You’re brooding.” Jacob’s voice was an anchor – always at the centre of things. He was a man who had always understood what temperance was, what moderation meant. Their sense of diplomacy had united them, what felt like a million years before. Even now, Shep felt the wash of understanding, the comfort of hearing that voice directed just for him.  
  
Dylan smiled, and turned away from the window. “I’m not brooding.”  
  
“You’re brooding.” He chuckled. Christ, that _smirk_. Dyl banished it with a kiss.  
  
“Look at her.“ Jacob indicated with his head, as unobtrusively as possible. He was grinning. She always hated it when she thought they were staring at her, but it was inevitable – nothing in the world was more frightening than not watching her. They were not relaxed parents, not inclined to allow free-roam without a care. They’d let Ruth roam, but they’d watch while they did. She was fearless, and it was petrifying. Right now, she sat at the other side of the shuttle, her hands furiously working at a crayon while the tight rings of her hair flung about in response; she was rendering picture after picture of the sky, space, that other ship. They didn’t want to burst the bubble, didn’t want to break in on this fragile, forming memory.  
  
Even now, Dylan could barely believe he had helped raise something that talked and functioned and came up with the most ridiculous, fantastic ideas. He had a study that they’d intended to keep off limits – that lasted about a week, until one afternoon she shuffled in wordlessly, tears in her eyes, and dumped herself in his lap, cuddled up as close as possible. It had taken half an hour for him to work out what was wrong; a character from her favourite book was dead. She asked if they could hold a funeral, so of course they did.  
  
He grinned a bit to himself; those kinds of memories warmed you sometimes, almost at random. Her hand suddenly stopped moving across the paper. She was transfixed by the goings-on outside. They were closing in on the relay, misshapen and alien, with Base One built out of its top. So many of the Relays looked this way now – they required maintenance of a fashion the Reaper Relays had never required. To Dylan they seemed ugly, lopsided, but trustworthy, like an old pick-up truck, like some worn tracksuit bottoms.   
  
Jacob was still grinning. “Damn, she’s smart. Just..look at her. She’s taking things in. She’s not glued to a machine, not stuck whining for a different vid or some snacks. She’s thinking.” Dylan smiled quietly, watching him watch. Sometimes Jacob’d just start talking about her – reverent, quiet, like he was talking about an idol. Ruth was the best kid in the universe and nothing else would be accepted as fact. But it was more than that – he taught her by example to aim to be the best; never quite prodding, never quite pushing, but leading through forests and across beaches and to that next hill. Jacob had put a little of his identity in her. Dylan could only assume this was what parenting meant - in a real sense, a visceral sense.  
  
These days they lived by the sea; they’d settled on South Wales, the old Pembrokeshire Coast, where a legend could retreat and still be close enough to the Alliance Parliament in London to be useful. It felt strange – in many ways Shepard was a man of the past now, consigned to speeches at Universities, diplomatic work on behalf of humanity, a long slow banking on his previous reputation.  
  
It was a relief. He’d never been much good with restraint. Living on Earth was a vote of confidence, the newest Alliance potentate said. He could barely remember their names any more. Udina had been an asshole, but at least he was memorable. Sometimes he wondered idly to himself if the story would have ended more heroically if he’d died up there. It took a glance at Ruth scribbling through her homework, a smirk from Jacob and the gentle strength of his touch, to see why that was fanciful nonsense. The good was grounded in the real, in the long ending, in the endless postscript after the last page.  
  
“Daddy, I want to see properly!” She was addressing one or both of them. They'd never worked out a way of referring to them seperately, since they both responded frantically to any call for help.  
  
The rush of the relay jump had begun. Jacob was up, and Dylan moved with him - together they hauled her up and balanced her between them, at a height to watch as a distant sun dissipated, was replaced by a swirling mass of blue, the crystal rush that could take you by surprise the hundredth time.  
  
“It’s so beautiful.” Her eyes had gone as big as saucers, dancing and resting on the endless waves of blue. For a moment she was still, tracing shapes and figures in her head. The coiled little-kid energy she kept bound up in her limbs was suddenly at peace, suddenly terribly quiet. There was a sense of precision to her. Even that hair, the joyous hair that seemed as animated as her face, had stopped. It lasted but a moment.  
  
“We should do this every week.” Ruth glanced round at them, earnest and imperious all at once, that bounding energy returning to her limbs – she had absorbed the blue like a form of energy, it had lit her, she was blossoming like some alien flower. She clambered down from their hold and skipped away to press her face against the opposite window, no longer preoccupied by what kind of view she got.  
  
Jacob was suddenly close, and his eyes were wet – with relief, with pride, it wasn't obvious. Dylan blinked, drew closer, slipped an arm round his waist. They had been so tired before, and now there was rest.

**Author's Note:**

> OK, this is really insanely fluffy. Try not to judge me.


End file.
